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Coffee shop renovations

Here are some photos of another project I did over the summer. Full gut and renovation for a coffee shop changing owners.

I wish I would have taken some more photos before we gutted the place. It was pretty dark and dingy. You had to walk through this weird smokey hallway to get in. The whole place reaked like old cigarattes, and had a terrible purple paint job. Just generally unpleasant and unwelcoming.

We ended up gutting the entire place, demoing the weird raised floor. Got rid of the old windows, put in a sidewalk entrance, and sliding garage door windows with soapstone counters. Reclaimed heart pine and hemlock bench seats and privacy wall for the bathroom. Custom site built maple cabinets. marmoleum floor. Lotsa fun stuff.

I built the cabinets out of unfinished maple ply. The owners wife wanted to do the finishing herself. So I let her take of that. I made up some samples with general finishes black water based stain, and general finishes water based poly. She did a nice job with it, maple can be pretty tricky. Im kind of worried about the durabilty of the poly, but theyre happy with it.

For the rough sawn stuff, we ran it through the planer a few times, just enough to flatten it out a bit and expose a bit of the fresh wood underneath. Wiped it down with some mineral spirits and took a wire brush to the edge grain to clean it up. Finish is just high-build poly. The tongue and groove pine paired with the rough sawn stuff was just wiped down and treated with a linseed oil finish.